Del Bonnet, a teaching pro at an obscure Florida golf resort, needs a change and needs it badly. Having crossed an ominous threshold-his fiftieth birthday-Bonnet receives frequent communiques from the AARP people. He gazes into the future and sees the prospect of assisted living growing larger by the day.
Serendipity intervenes. A sales rep working out of his station wagon leaves a handmade driver in Bonnet's modest golf shop. The pro privately auditions the driver with astounding results. Bonnet-celebrated for thirty years as the only touring pro to be arrested on the course during a PGA event-is quickly convinced that he has secured possession of no mere golf club, but a sword of salvation. So armed, he decides to embark on the PGA Seniors Tour.
Thus the formation of a strange triumvirate known as Team Del, consisting of the pro, the golf club that soon becomes dubbed "Big Luther," and a caddie, Doublewide McBride. Bonnet soon learns that the caddie is long on off-the-wall intuitions, short on behavioral graces recommended by Emily Post.
While the misadventures of Team Del might not serve as a tribute to the memories Hagen and Hogan, the events detailed in Michael Shropshire's The Pro stand out as perhaps the most hilarious odyssey in the modern annals of sports fiction.
"It's strictly fairways and greens for Mike Shropshire in his first swing as a golf novelist. This story has more laughs than a gang of over-served hackers in The 19th Hole."
The Dallas Morning News
"A brilliantly comic diversion . . . does for golf what the author's Seasons in Hell did for baseball. That is, it defines the genre in terms of a spirited satire. . . . A more hilarious look at the trappings and rituals of a country club sport would be hard to find."
Publishers Weekly
"When author Michael Shropshire evokes comparisons with Dan Jenkins and Hunter Thompson, you can be fairly certain you're in for entertainment. This book delivers."
